The main concern of the lecture is global warming. All of the three lectures have been concentrating on global warming, but from different point of views. The first speaker, Prof Palmer talked about the mechanism of how do greenhouse gases heat the earth, and then he moved on to talk about technologies of carbon capture and the influence of politics on technologies. The second speaker, Prof Sovacool, mainly focus on how to estimate technologies. He used two examples in order to show that political and economic factors must be taken into consideration when we estimate a technology, which is exactly the objective of STS. The last speaker, Dr Bala, talked about the evidence of global warming and the challenges of solving global warming. He also provides us some measures in response to global warming and climate change.
Among the three speakers, the second one, Prof Sovacool, stood in a rather different point of view from the other two in the discussion of global warming and climate change. I have never considered about the impacts of politics and economy in estimating a certain technology, or especially technologies on solving global warming. I have heard of many technologies before, in response to global warming, some of which sound really effective. However, I have never paid enough attention to the current situation of our fight against global warming. In fact, most of the technologies are not practical. They require a large amount of funds in order to apply it, which would cause more pressure on our economy, compared to global warming itself. China is a very good example. China has great potential in developing wind-based energy source. However, according to China’s national conditions, adopting wind-based energy source widely is unrealistic because that would cost much many and take a long time. Currently, China should focus on reducing energy consumption and increasing efficiency, which is the most realistic and suitable option for China.
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Sunday, 1 February 2009
China's Policies in Response to Global Warming
The documentary The Inconvenient Truth provides us a very detailed description of the challenge that all the whole human beings are faced with --- global warming. The average temperature of the earth has risen dramatically during the last decades of years, which has never happened in the history of human beings. If this trend continues in the future, it will cause an irretrievable disaster. Being aware of the importance of this problem, many countries have formulated their respective plans in response to the problem.
The core issue of global warming is the dramatic increase of the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The reason of this dramatic increase is high energy consumption which causes large amount of greenhouse gases to be emitted into the atmosphere. China, as one of the most rapidly developing countries, also has the highest energy consumption. Thus, China’s policies in response to global warming would be of vital importance to the world’s effort to reduce global warming. As one important measure to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, China has increased the tax of coals. Coal is the supporting energy of China; therefore this measure can effectively reduce coal consumption in China. As a result, a large proportion of carbon dioxide emission would be cut off, which is a significant contribution to reducing global warming.
However, increasing coal tax cannot eliminate the root of overemission of carbon dioxide. The determining policy is to invest in R&D to search for new techniques to increase the efficiency of energy sources, as well as to reduce total energy consumption, rather than purely reducing coal consumption. Although this policy requires large amount of fund and large number of highly educated people, once we find out a new technique to reduce energy consumption or increase efficiency of energy sources, this technique would be adopted widely by industries worldwide, the effect would be revealed immediately in several years. Global warming would be reduced significantly.
The core issue of global warming is the dramatic increase of the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The reason of this dramatic increase is high energy consumption which causes large amount of greenhouse gases to be emitted into the atmosphere. China, as one of the most rapidly developing countries, also has the highest energy consumption. Thus, China’s policies in response to global warming would be of vital importance to the world’s effort to reduce global warming. As one important measure to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, China has increased the tax of coals. Coal is the supporting energy of China; therefore this measure can effectively reduce coal consumption in China. As a result, a large proportion of carbon dioxide emission would be cut off, which is a significant contribution to reducing global warming.
However, increasing coal tax cannot eliminate the root of overemission of carbon dioxide. The determining policy is to invest in R&D to search for new techniques to increase the efficiency of energy sources, as well as to reduce total energy consumption, rather than purely reducing coal consumption. Although this policy requires large amount of fund and large number of highly educated people, once we find out a new technique to reduce energy consumption or increase efficiency of energy sources, this technique would be adopted widely by industries worldwide, the effect would be revealed immediately in several years. Global warming would be reduced significantly.
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